LONDON Feb 21 (Reuters) - Twitter and Russian search engine Yandex have agreed a partnership that will allow Yandex to show new tweets in its search results almost instantly, as Twitter becomes an increasingly important source of real-time information.

Twitter will give Yandex access to its so-called firehose of all public tweets, the two companies said on Tuesday, in an agreement similar to the one the social short-messaging site has with Microsoft's search engine, Bing.

"We wanted to make sure that Twitter content can be where Twitter users are already going," Twitter's director of business development, April Underwood, told Reuters by phone. "Discovery through search is so important."

Anton Pavlov, Yandex's blog search manager, said in a statement: "People share news, exchange opinions and discuss all sorts of matters in real-time all the time. This kind of information will help us enhance our search results."

Yandex has about 60 percent market share in Russia, ahead of Google with about a quarter of the market, although global leader Google has recently begun to erode its lead.

Google no longer partners with Twitter, favoring its own fledgling Google+ social network for social search results.

Asked about a possible renewal of a partnership with Google, Twitter's Underwood said: "Anything's possible, but there's not really an update to provide there at this time."

Twitter has more than 100 million active users and 400 million visitors per month. Its valuation tops $8 billion, even though it has not yet established a money-making model.

Google+, which is more akin to Facebook than Twitter, has 90 million users.

Twitter and Yandex declined to give financial details of their agreement. Microsoft has been reported to have paid $30 million for its deal with Twitter.

Adjusted net income reached 2.2 billion rubles ($74 million) from 1.47 billion rubles in the same period a year earlier, the company said in a statement distributed to reporters in Moscow today. Revenue climbed 56 percent to 6.44 billion rubles.

Yandex expects sales this year to increase 40 percent to 45 percent from the 20 billion rubles reached in 2011, which was a 60 percent gain.

MOSCOW and THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Feb. 22, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX - News), the leading internet company in Russia operating the country's most popular search engine and most visited website, today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year ended December 31, 2011.

Yandex NV (YNDX), Russia’s most popular Internet search engine, saw its weekly search-market share drop to the lowest since at least August 2010, while Google Inc.’s portion increased, data compiled by Liveinternet.ru show.

Yandex’s share of the Russian search market declined to 59.1 percent in the week through March 11, the lowest in data going back to August 2010 of Liveinternet, an Internet-service provider and researcher. Yandex’s share was 59.3 percent the previous week and averaged 59.3 percent over the past four weeks, the data showed.

Google’s (GOOG) share of Russian searches rose to 26 percent from 25.7 percent, compared with a four-week average of 25.6 percent, according to the Liveinternet data.

The share of Mail.ru Group Ltd. (MAIL), the largest Russian-language Internet company, was unchanged at 9.4 percent from the previous week and from a four-week average of 9.4 percent, the data showed.

Yandex’s U.S.-traded shares fell 1.6 percent to $23.10 by 12:56 p.m. in New York, set for the lowest close since March 1. Yandex has gained 17 percent this year after losing 49 percent from its May initial public offering in 2011, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Global depositary receipts of Mail.ru fell 1 percent to $39 in London, paring this year’s advance to 50 percent. Yandex is trading at 28 times analysts’ earnings estimates, compared with 46 times for Mail.ru (MAIL), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Yandex runs search sites along with a whole range of online services in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Turkey. In Russia, Yandex has about 60% share of the country's search market (according to Liveintenet.ru). The company's new sales office in Lucerne was opened to work more efficiently with its advertising clients in Europe by presenting Yandex and its products to customers and training them on how to maximize their advertising opportunities on Yandex.

"International sales have been growing fast over the past few years. We are launching our Lucerne sales office to build a closer relationship with advertising agencies and our clients in Europe," said Alexei Tretiakov, Chief Commercial Officer at Yandex. "We are also keen to intensify our marketing-for-sales activities in Europe to attract new clients. We do believe that by launching this office we'll boost our European sales."

Yandex offers a wide range of contextual and display advertising opportunities to clients interested in online-marketing in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan on its own web-sites, as well as on web sites across Yandex Advertising Network. Advertisers can manage their contextual campaigns via Yandex.Direct, Yandex's proprietary auction-based ad-serving system, available both in Russian and in English. The total daily audience of the ads served via Yandex.Direct exceeds 21 million (according to comScore, as of January 2012).

The Lucerne office is Yandex's second office in Switzerland. Earlier this year, the company opened a development office in Zurich after hiring a group of highly skilled engineers.

About Yandex

Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX - News) is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the country's most popular search engine and most visited website. Yandex also operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Yandex's mission is to answer any question internet users may have.

Yandex.Direct is the first and largest automated, auction-based ad-serving system for contextual advertising on the Russian internet. Ads are displayed for millions of users on search results pages and on the pages of the Yandex Advertising Network.

The Yandex Advertising Network (YAN) includes all third-party websites running ads served through Yandex.Direct. The YAN has thousands of websites showing hundreds of millions ads to viewers every day.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These include statements regarding the development of our international sales efforts and our further expansion plans. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted or implied by such statements, and our reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted or implied by such statements include, among others, competitive pressures, changes in advertising patterns, changes in the legal and regulatory environment, technological developments, and our need to expend capital to accommodate the growth of the business, as well as those risks and uncertainties included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Operating and Financial Review and Prospects" in our Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 2, 2012, which is available on our investor relations website at http://company.yandex.com/investor_relations/sec_filing.xml and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov.

Using Navigator, drivers can reduce the travel time to their destination by taking the best route available at the time of their journey. The app calculates an optimal driving route taking into account traffic jams. Navigator obtains current traffic information from the Yandex.Traffic service used by millions of drivers. If the traffic situation changes during the trip or the driver misses the correct turning, Navigator instantly rebuilds the route. In addition, voice prompts allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road when driving in an unknown area.

The Navigator app is based on the mapping service Yandex.Maps which continually updates its content providing drivers with up-to-date maps and road grids. Currently, Navigator has detailed maps of over 500 cities in Russia and Ukraine. Drivers can plan their trips as within one single city, so across the whole country. Street navigation is available for most Russian and Ukrainian cities with a population of over 200,000 and also for smaller cities in Ukraine.

"Yandex.Navigator is especially helpful for people driving somewhere where they haven't been before or for those with little driving experience. While our Yandex.Maps for Mobile app is indispensable for checking the current traffic situation when driving in a familiar area, the Navigator app is convenient for finding a faster way to a new destination. Although Yandex.Maps for Mobile and Yandex.Navigator are separate, standalone apps right now, we expect them to become more integrated with each other in the future," says Tigran Khudaverdyan, head of Mobile at Yandex.

The new application is available for smartphones and tablet devices supporting two popular platforms, iOS and Android, and can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play (former Android Market). To learn more about the app and see how it works, please watch this demo.

About Yandex

Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX - News) is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the country's most popular search engine and most visited website. Yandex also operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Yandex's mission is to answer any question internet users may have.

Russian internet technology firm Yandex ( YNDX) is set to announce earnings next week. Analysts are expecting the search engine giant to report EPS of 15 cents on $190 million in revenues.

Yandex dominates the internet search space in Russia with 64% market share. The company maintains a presence in other CIS nations like Belarus and Kazakhstan, and is attempting to enter the fast-growing Turkish market.

Russia ( RSX) is already trading at incredibly cheap valuations. Stocks on Moscow’s exchange are trading at only 4 times enterprise value divided by EBITDA, and 5 times when evaluating non-petroleum components. Compared to its emerging market peers trading at 6.5 times EV/EBITDA, Russia is about 40% cheaper.

Troika Dialog analyst Anna Lepetukhina feels that Yandex specifically is too cheap, claiming that the company “has excellent prospects and a fast sales-growth rate...(Yandex), right now it is undervalued.”

That certainly appears to be true when you compare Yandex to its domestic and foreign peers. Russian e-mail provider Mail.ru trades at 48 times trailing earnings, compared to Yandex at 38.7 times. Analogous Chinese firm Baidu ( BIDU) trades at 45.8 times trailing earnings.

Yandex is down roughly 17% from its initial public offering in May. Given its strong fundamentals and relatively cheap price, investors looking to gain exposure to Russia’s middle class might want give it careful consideration.

MOSCOW, March 19, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX - News) today announced that it has released a new advertising model, Real-Time Bidding (RTB), for testing by the public. The RTB technology gives advertisers an opportunity to enjoy all the benefits of the bid-based model now implemented by Yandex in display advertising.

Real-Time Bidding is an auction-based system for selling and buying ad impressions. Instead of advertisers directly bidding for impressions, the bidders are advertising systems fighting for the right to serve ads from their advertisers. Currently, the participants in Yandex's RTB auction include Yandex.Direct, the company's ad serving system, and myThings, which has become the first affiliate to work with Yandex. The potential number of participants in the RTB auction, both websites and Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), is unlimited.

Each time a web user visits a page, the Real-Time Bidding system instantly offers participating advertising systems an opportunity to buy an impression on the page the user is about to view. Advertising systems, in turn, automatically choose the best ad for this particular offer and make a bid. The system chooses the best bidder, and, in result, the web user sees the ad that has won the auction.

"Real-Time Bidding provides us with an entirely new business model that boosts both return on investment for advertisers and advertising revenues for websites. Advertisers now have an opportunity to target their display ads exclusively to specific audiences while paying exactly what they like. Website owners, on the other hand, can benefit from the auction-based sales that considerably improve their chances to increase revenue from advertising," says Nikolay Danilov, head of the project at Yandex.

The new technology has been implemented to serve search and display ads on websites in the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN). The first clients to explore the benefits of Real-Time Bidding are Yandex's partners in the YAN -- travel.ru, forumhouse.ru, newsru.com, and klerk.ru.

About Yandex

Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX - News) is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the country's most popular search engine and most visited website. Yandex also operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Yandex's mission is to answer any question internet users may have.

myThings offers adaptive retargeting ads generated in real-time, for each user based on previous interactions with the advertiser's website. Each ad is optimised to maximum relevancy for the user. myThings has over 200 partnerships with online retailers and brands, leading European affiliate networks, analytics platforms and advertising agencies.

"As the largest Russian internet business, we are pleased that Yandex will now be included in the NASDAQ Internet Index alongside some of the most innovative and influential internet companies in the world. The addition of Yandex to the index is a recognition of our company's growth and leadership, coupled with the strength of our technology and quality of our employees," said Arkady Volozh, Chief Executive Officer of Yandex.

The NASDAQ Internet Index is a modified market capitalization-weighted index designed to track the performance of the largest and most liquid U.S.-listed companies engaged in internet-related businesses and that are listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or NYSE Amex. The Index includes companies engaged in a broad range of internet-related services including, but not limited to internet software, internet access providers, internet search engines, web hosting, website design, and internet retail commerce.

About Yandex

Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX - News) is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the country's most popular search engine and most visited website. Yandex also operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Yandex's mission is to answer any question internet users may have.

Yandex’s share of the Russian online search market rose to 59.5 percent in the week through March 18, the highest since the week ended Jan. 22, according to Liveinternet, an Internet-service provider and researcher. Yandex’s share was 59.1 percent the previous week, the lowest since at least August 2010, and averaged 59.3 percent over the past four weeks, the data showed.

Google’s (GOOG) share of Russian searches fell to 25.8 percent from 26 percent the previous week and compared with a four-week average of 25.8 percent, according to Liveinternet.

The share of Mail.ru Group Ltd., the largest Russian-language Internet company, fell to 9.3 percent from the previous week and from a four-week average of 9.4 percent, the data showed.

Yandex’s U.S.-traded shares rose 0.3 percent to $24.75 at 11:51 a.m. in New York. Yandex has gained 25 percent this year after losing 21 percent from its May initial public offering in 2011, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Global depositary receipts of Mail.ru rose 0.3 percent to $38.70 in London. Yandex is trading at 29 times analysts’earnings estimates, compared with 45 times for Mail.ru (MAIL), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.